WE SHOULD be careful not to confuse education with academics. The two are of course related, but they aren't synonymous - education includes far more than coursework. The failure to recognize this fact skews our standards of what a "full" academic load should entail, causing students to spread themselves too thin and receive too superficial an academic experience. To fix the problem, we should redefine a normal, full course load as 12 credits.
A study released last week by the University's Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies reveals that the average University student does not spend the ideal 2-3 hours per week per hour of academic credit studying. That goal means that a student taking a normal 15-credit load would study 30-45 hours a week outside of class. Instead, he or she studies outside of class for approximately 15-20 hours a week.
These statistics should not alarm educators in terms of students' work ethic. This disparity between the ideal academic workweek and the average student's reality does not suggest that students are lazy slackers. Rather, it reflects something we all probably know but perhaps don't think about much: Academic work is only part of a student's job. University students do more than class work - they also have, on average, more than one significant extracurricular commitment. These other activities occupy a substantial number of hours per week of the average student's time.
That's as it should be. The term "extracurricular" is a bit inappropriate. Quite literally, it means "outside or beyond the curriculum." This implies a much too narrow conception of a curriculum. It suggests that non-academic pursuits aren't part of real education - that they're extra, supplemental, second-rate. They're nice to have if you have time, but they're not really part of a college education.
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Students learn at least as much, if not more, outside their classes than in them. College is a transition process from "school" to "job." By the end of four years, students are expected to have evolved from students to professionals. Participation in activities outside the classroom is integral to that transition. If we expect college to prepare students for life and not just teach them dry facts, then we must recognize that a college education cannot reside only within the four walls of a classroom. Student organizations - some more than others, but all to some extent - play a crucial role in educating students. Our expectations of students and their workload should reflect that.
By the more narrow view of education, the 2-3 hours per week per credit hour makes sense. For the average student taking 15 credits, that involves 30-45 hours a week outside of class, for a total of 45-60 hours a week - pretty reasonable. But if you consider at least some of those "extracurricular" activities to be somewhat "intracurricular," the picture changes. A modest commitment to most student organizations involves upward of 10 hours per week of a student's time. Add that into the pot, and you're expecting students to work at least 55-70 hours a week - even more if they take on a bigger commitment or get involved in more than one group. Of course, there will be some students who work that much, just like there are some professions in which employees work 70 or more hours a week. But that's not a reasonable expectation for the average student.
As a result, students cut back on the amount of time they devote to courses. Because most or all students do this gradually, we don't notice it as acutely. Expectations change, curves shift to the left and professors gradually revise their standards, whether they realize they're doing it or not.
The result is that no one class gets as much attention as it should. When students work 15-20 hours a week instead of 30-45, each class gets around 3-4 hours a week instead of 6-9. Education becomes more superficial. Students still learn about lots of things, but they learn about them less fully. They gloss over material.
We can change this set of circumstances in two ways. One option is to demand that students put less time into "extracurricular" activities. This isn't a good option. Take these activities away, and a college education will be left dry. Students won't be prepared to use their educations in the real world.
The other option is to acknowledge that academics aren't everything. We can restructure our expectations to leave room for other activities while still ensuring that each class gets enough attention to be meaningful. We should change the normal full load to 12 credits. This would give students more time per class and make academics more meaningful. Such a reform would eliminate the need for students to choose between pure academics and a real education.
(Bryan Maxwell's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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